


Doppelgänger

by Neyiea



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27880818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: Selina catches sight of something strange, and trying to take a photo only draws attention. Thankfully, for her, Bruce is good at talking them out of trouble.
Relationships: Jeremiah Valeska/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 8
Kudos: 94





	Doppelgänger

**Author's Note:**

> This is another one of those things that has been sitting in my documents for ages gathering dust; figured I may as well post it while I veeeery slowly try to write other stuff.

“Holy shit,” Selina says—quite out of the blue in the midst of their ritual Friday evening homework session at the coffee shop near the school—staring at something off to the side. “It’s a nerd version of Jerome.”

Bruce feels his face scrunch up. “Bridgit’s friend? Who’s in our science class?” That’s the only Jerome he knows of, in any case. “The one who’s always getting detention?” He has to sneak a peek over his shoulder, because from what he knows of Jerome ‘nerd’ is not at all a word that describes him.

He catches sight of the target waiting in line to order, and if he were more prone to dramatism he might have actually let his jaw drop. As it is, though, he blinks in brief alarm before recovering quick enough to say, “It is a nerd version of Jerome,” in slightly bewildered agreement.

Weird.

“I can’t believe there’s two of them.”

“I can’t believe how presentable Jerome would look if he actually combed his hair for once in his life,” Bruce muses before letting his attention fall back onto his hot chocolate and science notes, lest he be caught outright staring. His chair is not on enough of an angle to see Not-Jerome in his peripherals when he sits straight, and out of sight was out of mind. “Still, it’s not as if either of us knows Jerome well enough to—” His eyes flick up to Selina, who is very subtly tilting her phone in the direction of Not-Jerome. “Selina, what are you doing?”

“Gotta take a picture and text Bridgit,” she explains. “See if she knows about a brother. If not, then maybe Jerome really was created in a lab just like those rumours we heard last year. Maybe this is just like Orphan Black, and there are a whole bunch of Jeromes out there.”

A truly terrifying thought. The school as a whole could barely survive one Jerome as it was.

“Selina,” Bruce hisses, trying to grab her phone without making a scene. She avoids him easily. “You can’t just take pictures of strangers.” 

“I could if you quit trying to stop me, Bruce. C’mon, no one’s going to know except you, me, and Bridgit.” She goes still, but her eyes are constantly flicking to the side where Not-Jerome is calmly placing his order at the till. “This is really weird, Bruce. I mean, this guy dresses like he’s in his twenties but they’ve gotta be the same age and I swear I’ve never seen him at school or heard anything about him. Do you think they’re twins separated at birth or something?”

“That doesn’t seem a bit fanciful to you?” He can’t keep the skepticism out of his voice. “We’re not living in a soap opera.”

“Oh really?” Selina drawls. “Not living in a soap opera, Bruce Wayne, heir of Wayne Enterprises?” She tilts her head and cocks an eyebrow at him. “Why aren’t you going to school at Anders Preparatory Academy again? Something about wanting to make real friends? And maybe even something about the uncle of your ex-girlfriend trying to bribe your family company’s board of directors? But no, we’re definitely not living in a soap opera.”

“Well, I suppose when you put it like that,” he grants her with only a small amount of difficulty. 

“Exactly,” Selina says with a wink, setting up her phone again. “Maybe by taking this picture I’ll be reuniting long-lost family, Bruce. That’s, like, the best deed that I’ll have done in my life. You owe me hot chocolate for the rest of the school year if Bridgit says she doesn’t know who this guy is either.”

“Fine,” Bruce says, choosing not to mention the fact that he always paid for Selina’s hot chocolate anyways. “Just be quick about it or he’s going to notice.”

“Relax, Bruce. I just gotta wait to make sure his face is actually in focus, and, there.”

She snaps the photo.

Her flash goes off.

“Shit,” she scrambles, instinctively shoving her phone into Bruce’s hands. Bruce, out of reflex, tries not to let it drop to the ground. “Shit, shit, he saw the flash.”

“He saw? Selina—” Bruce twists, warily cradling the phone close to his chest, and sees the young man in question walking straight towards them with a frown on his face.

Bruce drops the phone onto the table, but clearly the damage has been done. The stranger had noticed a flash as he’d picked up his order, turned, and saw someone fumbling around with a phone. It wasn’t difficult to follow what his thought-process might be. 

“Sorry,” Selina whispers across the table. “Just. You’re good at talking your way out of trouble.”

Bruce doesn’t know if that makes him feel better or worse about the situation as Not-Jerome comes to a stop in front of him.

“It’s rude to take photos of people without their permission,” he tells them, and while his voice isn’t exactly like Jerome’s—a little less rough, a little more pronounced—there is still enough of a similarity that it’s jarring. “I’ll delete it myself, if you’ll be so kind.” He holds his free hand out pointedly, and Bruce doesn’t hesitate to hand it over. 

Selina’s background is a photo that Alfred had taken of all her friends on her birthday, and her case is a standard black. He’s pretty sure all of the most recent photos on her camera roll are from their last movie night together, too, so nothing about it really gives any clear indication that it isn’t Bruce’s phone.

Not-Jerome very quickly opens up the images and deletes the most recent photo. Up close he looks even more like Jerome, even if Bruce is pretty sure that Jerome has never looked this serious about anything in his life, ever.

“Are you related to Jerome Valeska?” He asks bluntly, because really, if they’re interacting with this guy in-person anyways they might as well ask directly.

“If not,” Selina pipes up, “are you a body-snatcher?” 

Not-Jerome fumbles, eyes briefly going wide. Huh. Strangely cute for someone who looked just like the quintessential juvenile delinquent. “Wh—a body snatcher? No. I do not snatch bodies,” he tells Selina firmly before his eyes whirl back to Bruce. “Jerome is my brother; my twin, as you might have guessed.”

“We’ve never seen you in school.”

“Jerome and I have not been in the same school since we were in elementary.” Not-Jerome, Bruce is probably going to have to ask for his name just so he can stop thinking about him as that, straightens his posture. There is no small amount of pride in his voice as he says, “When I started skipping grades I was sent to Saint Ignatius, instead.”

“Wow,” Selina drawls, unimpressed. “Catholic school. That’s even worse than Anders Prep.”

Bruce bites back a sigh as Jerome’s brother quickly develops an affronted look. Selina was great, as long as you knew to take her offhand bluntness with a grain of salt, but people who didn’t know her generally seemed to think that she did it with malicious intent. 

Hence why Bruce has gotten so adept at talking them out of trouble. 

He rises out of his chair, the movement ensuring that he’s the focus of the young man’s attention again, and he holds out a hand with all the graceful poise that his mother and Alfred drilled into him when he was a child learning the ins and outs of gentlemanly behaviour. 

“I’m Bruce Wayne,” he introduces, hoping the disclosure of his full name might lend him a hand in this unfortunate situation. It usually did. “I’m sorry about the photo. We didn’t know Jerome had a twin, and you seem very different from him.” And he had seemed rather pleased to highlight their academic differences, at the very least, so Bruce decides it is not too difficult to add on, “It’s a bit startling, to be honest.”

Which wasn’t a lie, because he was a very startling presence, but Bruce didn’t tend to lay it on so thick.

He hears Selina snort behind him. Thankfully the person that he’s unsubtly trying to flatter their way out of trouble with doesn’t notice. 

“Jeremiah Valeska,” he says, reaching out to take Bruce’s hand in his own. He’s only a few years older than Bruce—he knows this because it was heavily implied that Jerome had celebrated his eighteenth birthday by pulling the school’s fire alarm several months ago, though the high chances of it being someone smoking in a bathroom made it impossible to say for sure—but he carries himself as if he’s a bona fide adult. It isn’t just the suit lending him an air of maturity, it’s everything else, too. The way that he speaks, the steady eye contact, the firm grip of his handshake. If he’d been busy skipping grades while Jerome was getting into enough mischief that he’d been held back one, then maybe he was already well into completing his post-secondary education. Everyone always told Bruce that he was growing up too fast, but Jeremiah seemed to be on an entirely other level. 

“I’m sorry. Did you just say _Bruce Wayne?_ ” His eyes rove over Bruce’s face, seeming more curious than anything. “And you go to the same school as _my brother?_ ” His tone takes on a highly incredulous note.

Bruce is used to it. Even his parents and Alfred had had a difficult time understanding Bruce’s unshakable desire to leave Anders Preparatory Academy behind. That left a few schools in the city to choose from, and while Bruce and his parents were not particularly devout—the most ceremonial they had ever been was during his bar mitzvah, and even then it had been Bruce’s father who’d become the most emotional of them all—a Catholic school was still entirely out of the question. That left two schools; one of which would have taken him the better part of an hour to be driven to in the mornings. So; Gotham High School it was. 

“Some children can be remarkably cut-throat when they grow up a certain way.” Or under the influence of certain, even more cut-throat family members. And Gotham had a lot of ruthless business men and women out there itching to climb their way to the top by whatever means necessary. “Or are likely to put on an act if it means getting close enough to take advantage of certain connections. I like Gotham High far more than I ever liked Anders Prep.” He draws back his hand, somewhat startled that the contact had lasted as long as it did, and he allows a small smile to grace his mouth. “Even if the K-9 unit visits the school every other week.”

Jeremiah’s lips twitch, like he’s not sure whether he wants to smile or not.

“Well, I suppose as long as it makes you happy…”

“It does.” He casts a glance over his shoulder to catch Selina staring at him with raised eyebrows. “I’ve made very good friends there.”

Selina’s eyes dart behind him, then settle back on his face. She bites her lip as if she’s trying to hold back laughter. Bruce furrows his eyebrows and turns back to try and catch a glimpse of whatever she’d found funny.

He doesn’t see anything worth laughing over. Unless she was just amused at Bruce’s dedication to the cause, which wasn’t entirely unlikely. 

“In any case,” he continues, determined to get through this strange interaction with so much civility that his mother would weep with pride. “I’m sorry again for the photo, Jeremiah. I hope that you’ll forgive me?”

“Yes,” Jeremiah breathes. “Yes, of course. Bruce,” he tacks on, drawing out the name as if it’s something he’s never had to pronounce before. “Though I do hope you’ll never do it again.”

“I promise,” Bruce vows with the upmost honesty.

Whether or not Selina would attempt to take pictures of strangers again was, regretfully, something that he could not make any guarantees about.

“Well, good. That’s good.” Jeremiah breaks eye contact. With his free hand he straightens out his suit-jacket, although it’s just as unrumpled and immaculate as it had been when he was standing in line. He must have become used to uniforms in school, but the full suit was probably new to him. Perhaps he’d had some sort of important presentation today and he’d dressed in his most mature outfit so that his peers and professors would take him a little more seriously despite his youth. 

Bruce feels his lips twitch, somewhat charmed at the idea.

“It was nice meeting you,” he says. Then, because honesty was the best policy, he adds, “I like your tie-pin.”

“Oh.” Jeremiah’s face starts to take on a curious shade of pink. Perhaps he wasn’t used to compliments. “Thank you.” His hand flutters up to his chest, smoothing out his tie. He looks strangely nervous, eyes roving the area around Bruce but not actually settling on Bruce. It’s a good thing Bruce hadn’t complimented anything else, otherwise he might have overwhelmed him. “I’ll leave you to your studies, then.” He says after his gaze has settled on the notes laid out on the table. “Have a pleasant afternoon.”

“You as well,” Bruce tells him.

Jeremiah looks at him, nods once, and turns away.

Strange.

But ultimately much less strange and uncomfortable than Bruce had thought that interaction was going to go. He turns back to the table and sits down, and when he looks across from him he finds that Selina is staring at him with a look of great significance.

“What?”

“I like your tie-pin?” She folds her hands together and rests her chin on her interlocked fingers. “Really, Bruce?”

“It was nice,” Bruce tells her. “Classy. I would have complimented the whole outfit, but that seems a little much for a first meeting.”

“So that wasn’t your way of flirting just now?”

Bruce purses his lips in thought; trying to figure out if he’d crossed the border of flattery and entered into the territory of intentional flirting. Maybe a little, he supposes, since Jeremiah _had_ seemed rather _his type_ , though Bruce wouldn’t have initiated anything at all if he weren’t already attempting to de-escalate the situation. 

“I’m not flirting, or trying to get us out of trouble, every time that I say something nice to someone,” Bruce eventually tells her, unsubtly avoiding a direct answer. “It’s good manners.”

“Good manners,” Selina repeats dryly. “Right.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Well, she was his best friend, he probably shouldn’t be entirely surprised. 

“Not really.” Selina drags a finger around the rim of her hot chocolate. “And just as a heads up, in case you decide to reflect upon this and figure out that it _was_ flirting.” Her eyes lock on something behind Bruce’s back, and then slowly move across the coffee shop’s windows. “I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be opposed to a bit more of it, if you ever happened to cross paths again.”

Bruce’s eyes follow the line of her gaze, and he spots Jeremiah walking outside.

“You think so?”

Jeremiah’s eyes flick to the side, then, and he actually stops mid-step when he realizes that Bruce is looking at him from beyond the glass. When Bruce lifts his hand in a subdued wave Jeremiah mirrors it, cheeks going pink again.

Bruce finds himself somewhat charmed all over again. 

“Oh yeah,” Selina tells him. “Absolutely positive.” 

Huh. Good to know. 

“Well.” Bruce's gaze turns back to his notes. “I suppose I’ll have to keep an eye out for him, then.”

He hears Selina make a muted sound of amusement, followed by a softly spoken, “Called it.”


End file.
